-Ralia Vardaxis

Lately, we’ve all felt the slouching economy tug at our pockets.  Supporting the arts can be difficult, and even seem nonessential to some.  Luckily, Reading native and Albright graduate Ralia Vardaxis envisions a bright future for the artistic community, one where artists and patrons work together for a common, positive bond.   I sat down with Ralia to talk about the community, giving back, and inspiring the artist in everyone.

Michael Weekley (MW): How did you decide to work in Reading? Do you think it is important for Reading natives to give back?

Ralia Vardaxis (RV): It just came naturally.  After I finished Albright I started working in Reading.  Not in arts, I started at Wachovia Bank.  You always think it will be temporary, but sometimes life does not work out that way.  I worked as a teller and then ended up in marketing, which led to community relations.  So much of my extra-curricular work life with volunteerism led me to the arts and back to what my strengths were at Albright because I was a Domino Player, I was in the choir, and I was involved with the newspaper.  I was an English Major.  I ended up doing marketing and community relations.  Everybody just got to come to think of me naturally as the artistic one or the one involved in the community.

MW:  What is Leadership Berks?

RV: Leadership Berks is an excellent program for people who want to become familiar with the community.  It’s a great way to get an entry into the nonprofit sector if you want to be in a leadership position or on a board.  It gives you experience, you meet once a month with your classmates from all different businesses or non-profits, and community.  You visit different non-profits, different government entities, the education sector, to give you an idea where you can make a difference with your time and talents and you also learn a lot about the responsibilities of a board member with governance and fundraising.  It’s a nine month condensed training.

MW: What do the Pagoda Awards represent to you?

RV: The Lifetime Achievement Award was the only award we gave away for a number of years, and it tended to be given to artists but also to others.  We also felt that there was merit in recognizing people who were not necessarily artists themselves but were who were teaching and passing on the craft to another generation and inspiring new artists, so that’s where artistic development came from.

MW: You are the Vice President of Development for the Reading Symphony Orchestra.  What types of programs target the community?

RV: Since I have come on we have really started something exciting with the Reading School District.  We have a 20 year history of Youth Orchestra programs, also student concerts that we do for the children of all Berks County school districts, who all come in the Sovereign Performing Arts Center over 2 days in October, and we perform a symphony concert targeted to a younger audience. We also feature students as soloists in the orchestra. We have had 2 youth orchestras, but this year is 3 we have 189 students participating.  A lot of kids participating in the program.  Coming from the Reading School District myself, and even some teachers from the Reading School District have told us they are losing kids.  They start them on instruments in 4^th and 5^th grade and they have about 650 students who are interested in an instrument at that age group.  Tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades don’t even have 60 kids to put a band together with.  We felt that we could help them to retain some of those students if we could put together an after school program if they could get free lessons in a neighborhood setting.  The school district was dealing with No Child Left Behind; they don’t have time for an ensemble until April.  They have so many obstacles; we felt that there was some way we could help. So we went to the school board and said here’s this program we think we can work with some other community organizations like the community school of music who have facilities for these kids we can offer group lessons, we’d like to do it for free with finding grants and donations from individuals to make this happen.  The school district was so pleased that we came with a solution that they agreed to fun the program’s first year.  So no we’ve got our funding and we’re launching this program called the orchestra zone, which I think really is going to give kids opportunities that they have not had before.  They could not pay for lessons or instruments themselves.  There are third world countries in South America that put kids on violins when they are in kindergarten and that is the thing that gets them out of their socioeconomic situation and they play in orchestras that travel around the world now.  And theirs so many links to academic performance with playing an instrument and the mathematical analysis and discipline that goes into that that spills over into their academic performance and I think it will help elevate all of that at the same time.

MW: Was there any particular moment that inspired you to become involved in the arts?

RV: I don’t know that there is one particular moment, I just think that when I go to a play something hits me that seems to me that it’s got to be something.  There’s a communication there that doesn’t happen in any other way in our society.  You are able to empathize with someone or a cultural background or an ethnic group that you cant step into another person’s shoes like that in other way , and I think art has that way of conveying across cultures, across races, across genders.. and I think that is with all the arts. With music, with a painting that you see that you really relate to it, with a live performance.  Maybe that’s just me as a person that that’s how I relate to other people on that kind of level.  It doesn’t matter what kind of art it is.  If it speaks to you, I think it’s fulfilled its purpose.  When I was at Albright I enjoyed performing in the theatre.  Now after 20 years of being in the corporate world and branching out, having a little more time, I’ve gone back to that as a way of self-expression too. I think it really helps me actually work through some things that are going on in my life, just being able to step into another character, or take on what could possibly be going through their head, and use some of my own experience to bring to that.

MW: Anything can happen.

RV: Exactly, Actually I have to say this past year I had this breakthrough moment when I was taking one of these acting workshops where I had to sit right across from the other actor, and we were doing nothing other than looking into each other’s eyes and reading this script, and there was this moment when the scene took over.  It was like neither one of us were acting, it was just like there was this relationship happening between the two of us, and that was like—I finally got it, what acting is all about .  It was just like that moment of it being so real that you were just reacting to that other person and what they were bringing to that role.

MW: I think actually you did find your moment there.

RV: Laughs

MW: What types of programs has Berks Arts Council been organizing lately?

RV: BAC just started this Fast Lane Art Program which puts local artists’ work out on billboards so it’s out there for everybody to see so its kind of educational outreach and awareness at the same time and then artists get their work seen.  We’re also doing art salons now where people are opening their homes to do an open house with an artist’s work.  They will show how you can have art in your home and the artists talk about their work.  There are a lot of different and new things popping up all over the place.

MW:  What are the best methods for promoting the arts?

RV:  Well—I think you just have to take advantage of every opportunity that someone wants to talk to you.  From the business world I was involved with the Chamber of Commerce and United Way, and I have stayed in contact in serving on some of those committees because I just think that being able to talk about what the symphony is doing to people who are normally in their business blinders, you just meet people wherever they are and talk to them about the arts.  And I think we are getting more of a buzz with the symphony because we’ve got a monthly radio program every time we have a concert.  We also have an E-blast that goes out almost weekly when we are in-season.  We have folks who do some things for us.  Keeping in constant contact with people and some of the new viral types of marketing that are coming out help you do that. It doesn’t always help you sell tickets, but at least it keeps you at the top of mind for people.

MW: What does GoggleWorks represent to the community?

RV: Its really I think made this community aware of just how much talent there is locally. Because we’ve brought it all together into one place and organized it and people who are interested in the arts now have a place to go and say well, it’s under this roof.  And so many artists said, when the GoggleWorks first opened, to me, I can’t believe that this is here, this is such a wonderful thing that we can all now collaborate with each other too.  The Arts Council is on the 5^th floor, but right below them is the Dance Studio, and we can constantly here the Nutcracker going on down there, and it’s really a neat atmosphere to work in.  We are in amongst all of the rest of the working arts organizations and artists.  Its more accessible, and a focal point for the arts, which I think is a wonderful thing.

MW: What does Berks Arts Council represent to the artistic community?

RV: I hope it represents a way for artists to learn how they can make their work more accessible to the community, to get their art seen, to learn about how to sell their art, how to promote themselves better, we the arts council are always talking about how we want to be the go-to organization for the arts, so if there’s an issue around the arts, we want to be the ones to be able to advise what’s the best way to go about this, how to market this, what’s needed here.  We’re both an advocate and at the same time a presenting organization, which is at times difficult for us in many ways because we’re trying to sell tickets at the same time we are trying to help artists do their own thing. So we have to have a really successful jazz festival in order to promote some of these other things we’re doing.  We walk a very fine line all the time, a fine rope.  Most other arts councils don’t have this problem, most are presenting organizations, or they could be an umbrella where they raise money and trickle down the dollars.  We don’t really do that, we’re a conduit for funding from the state of Pennsylvania, which is Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, which you know, so we collect all the applications, we try to coach the organizations who apply for grants, we convene the panelists who will come an make the final decisions and score all the applications and pass along the money.  We don’t actually fundraise.  We also present things, so we present the Film Festival, the jazz festival; we present the Bandshell concerts in the summertime, so we get a lot of stuff here.  And I think at least with the Jazz Festival, we are bringing the single most profitable festival to Reading, which brings in lots of tourism and tens of thousands of people.

MW: What was the arts scene like at Albright when you attended?

RV: I think mostly our friends came to see the Domino Player shows, and of course a lot of professors certainly in the English and other departments were supportive.   I don’t know, probably there were community people who were involved who came too, alumni, who came to see the Domino Players, and certainly our family, we used to have a once a year concert in the spring semester where we collaborated with one of the local churches, which would bring some community people in.  I guess I kind of felt a little bit like we were maybe the misfits, maybe the artistic crowd were the misfits of Albright.  I don’t think we ever felt like loners or anything, but people were either into football basketball or cheerleading or their sorority stuff, and then there was the arts crowd.   I’m glad to see it’s come a long way.

MW: What events do you still come to?

RV: I haven’t been to a holiday concert in a few years.  I do stay involved with an alumni sorority, Phi Delta Sigma, and you are kind of like invited based on grades and activities to join your senior year so you become a sister for life sort of thing, so we have four events a year that we are involved with Albright in.

MW: How could Albright become better connected to the arts community?

RV: For the local arts community for find a way of getting our information to students of what is going on in the local community that they may be interested in, for example coming to a free rehearsal of the symphony, of finding a way to get you guys tickets to the jazz festival.  So many arts organizations are cognizant of the fact that we need to bring new audiences into what we’re doing and we’ve got these five gems of colleges in Berks County, and the connections just don’t seem to be there. I mean we reach out and we’ll reach out to a professor at Penn State (Berks) about a film festival thing we are doing, or someone from Albright is on the Arts Council Board, but it doesn’t seem to be fully integrated.  There always seems to be some kind of wall, maybe not a wall but a scrim.  Networking through the arts, you never know what connection, new idea, or fund, or what person could be interested in your program with a partnership or collaboration.  Working across all those lines is the way to get things done anymore.

MW: I was going to say, what would get you more involved in the arts scene at Albright, but–

RV: If someone just asked me, I’d probably just do it. Laughter

Literary quotes adorn the ceiling tiles, and groups of friends happily smoke flavored tobacco combinations. Saturday nights are live music nights at The Pillar Lounge, and our group is excited to take in the experience that this Hookah Bar offers. We are welcomed by delicious hookah flavors, board games and coffee, and pizza rolls. Yes, pizza rolls! Many readers may be wondering what exactly a hookah bar is, and how this place has become a popular hangout Berks County. I spoke with Pillar owner Ralph Kabakoff to find out what all the smoke—I mean buzz, is about.

Michael Weekley (MW): Can you take me through the process of taking the Pillar from concept to reality?

Example hookah.

Ralph Kabakoff (RK): The concept of The Pillar came about when I was about 16 years old and I realized that there was no place people could go to get to know each other, and others.  When I was seventeen I went to California and discovered a hookah.  (I think I was six when I discovered coffee.)  Later, at 20, my brother and I decided to open the first lounge with my brother, 22 at the time.  We put together what was a pretty primitive business, using goodwill couches and tables, but the concept was there, and I saw that it could work.  After a year, I realized I didn’t have the time to give the lounge what it needed while I was still in college.  So my brother and I decided to shut that one down.  I finished college and a few months later opened the current Pillar Lounge.  Most of the work seemed easy, writing a business plan, picking out decor, hookahs, etc.  The hardest part for me was waiting while the city officials took their time giving me the necessary permits to open.  Another difficult part was saving money, while being in school and living on my own.  But, it made me appreciate the things in life that are cheap or free, and to realize the value of money in relation to happiness.

MW: I personally love the coffee and games, but I’m sure everyone has something different that they like about the Pillar.  What do you think makes the Pillar a special place to visit, and how do you try to make it comfortable for anyone?

RK: I believe The Pillar is a special place to visit because of the open environment.  All of our sections are not closed off, there are no enclosures so two groups of people quickly mold into one.  We treat each customer as a person, and I encourage my employees to be very human, as well. For example, if we are crowded a group can either wait or be seated with another.  The majority of the time, they choose to be seated with another group, and end up making friends and getting to know others who frequent the lounge.  The lounge also offers games, books and Super Nintendo, for those who do not know what to talk about right away or just want to spend the evening reading.  Truly, everything about the lounge is special, from the artwork, to the customers to the employees.

MW: Do you participate in any type of art actively (playing music, painting, etc.), or are you just an appreciator?  Either way, what draws you to art?

RK: I write a lot, sometimes poetry, other times just articles. I’ve also recently began exploring photography.  My greatest passion is conversation though, and that is what draws me to art.  I believe that art is just another form of communication and a passionate one at that.  The enthusiasm you see in a guitar player when his eyes are closed or in the middle of a solo, the passion you see in each stroke of paint on a canvas, and the detail you see when a photographer shows you how they see the world; they are all just another form of conversation.  I believe we, as a society, need to express more and to appreciate those who converse so eloquently with art.

MW: You seem very ambitious and driven, and express intentions to expand the Pillar to an alternate location.  How far would you like to take the franchise?

RK: Thank you, I don’t think I am that ambitious or driven, if I had to say one trait is different from many of the people I’ve met,

Ralph Kabakoff, Owner

it’s just that I’m not afraid to put myself out there.  Many people have the ability and the passion to do much more than I have accomplished, but they are afraid to pursue that passion.

MW: What type of events to do you hold at the Pillar?  What would you like to hold in the future?

RK: Right now we have movie night, band night and theme night.  In the future, I would like to host poetry night, art shows, poker night, and possibly a book club.

MW: What are your feelings on the artistic scene in Berks County?

RK: I think the art scene in Reading is in dire need of some help.  Recently, we have acquired the GoggleWorks and the new movie theater which are fantastic, but if you want art in Reading you have to leave Reading and go to West Reading.  Even that is just a couple blocks long.  I know many bands that feel unappreciated by the local venues.  On a whole art needs to be valued more in the world and given the respect it deserves as a sophisticated form of communication.

MW: What types of artistic events would you like to see in the future in the community?

RK: It would be wonderful to develop First Thursday more in Reading.   I would like to see more art shows and more talent coming through Reading, we do get some great bands that come through; I would like to see more of that.

MW: How do you think college students can become more involved in the arts and community?

RK: College students should get out and support art more.  They should work to get their art out there as well.  Many college students feel as though they are waiting till after college to begin “real life.”  It would be wonderful if they realized what they are capable of right now.

Check out Ralph and the Pillar at www.pillarlounge.com

Michael Weekley (MW): What does being the general manager of Berks Jazz Fest entail?

John Ernesto (JE): I program all of the music for the major acts and I do all the coordination yearlong to build the festival along with Berks Arts Council, particularly Gary Spencer who is the production manager.  We work yearlong on this, and we get to the point where we bring our team together.  I’m the coach and we just work together, we get a big group of people together and make it happen.

Berks Jazz Fest 2009 Merchandise Design

MW: How did the jazz fest; which started as a 3-day event, become a 10-day landmark festival that is today?

JE: When the festival first started, it was collaboration between the Berks Arts Council, the Berks Visitor’s Association; and the hotel groups, who wanted to create a cultural arts event in a time when the hotels are very quiet, a very slow time of year.  And that’s how it started, it started as a weekend event, 2 ½ days.  The third year, when I took over my goal was, let’s see if we can move this thing forward and constantly evolve to make it not necessarily bigger but better, so eventually we added Thursday to the lineup, then we were doing some local things on Wednesday to kind of fill it out a little bit, to make it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Then the tenth year, we came up with this plan to create something special, ten days for the tenth anniversary, so we accomplished both weekends.  We never turned back, we said, well, we can’t go back now.  So it’s been ten years, it’s been a ten day festival for the last nine years, so now it’s not going to be twenty, it won’t be twenty years.
MW: Not 20 for 20 years?

JE: Ha-ha, no.  So that’s how its evolved to ten days, and our goal is to bridge the two weekends with community-oriented stuff, like we did the two nights this year, Monday and Tuesday with the United States Army Jazz Ambassadors free community concerts, we did some things at the Miller Center, so we try to bridge it with local and regional events.  Now this year we had Béla Fleck on Monday night which was an unusual opportunity for us, but it worked out for us.  And Tuesday we did a thing with Andy Narell and a high school student drum band out of Maryland.  Our goal always is to get as many elements of the community involved as possible.  We want to make it a true community event.

MW: Listening to 10^th Anniversary Jazz Fest Commemorative CD, I hear a great diversity in the music.  You do talent coordination for what comes in.  Is this diversity a goal?

JE: We try to make the festival as diverse as possible to appeal to different audiences.  It’s a Jazz Fest but I’ve always stayed away from that argument, what is jazz?  To me…blues has its roots in jazz; there are jazz elements in everything today.  So we try to make it a diverse festival, appealing to different genres of music and different styles.  So far it’s paid off, and I think it’s important to do that.  You can’t just do one style of music; it won’t work in today’s environment.  People want diversity.

MW: I also think that anyone can appreciate someone with the virtuosity of Victor Wooten and Béla Fleck…

JE: Right. Derek Trucks.

MW: Yeah.  My sister went to that show, she said it was awesome.

JE: There are a lot of jazz elements in Derek’s playing.  He appeals to a different audience than the traditional audience or the contemporary jazz audience.  There are a lot of jazz elements there.

JE: Our goal for the 20^th Anniversary is to bring back the artists who performed the first year.  That’s our goal right now.  And we’re pretty close to achieving that goal, which includes Wynton Marsalis.

MW: When does the planning for next year begin?

JE: We’ve been working on 2010 festival since January.  There’s a conference in New York that we go to, and that process started then.  But before we lock in any artists, we have to make sure all our venue partners are on board with the dates, our hotel partners, we have to make sure our floor plan is in place.  We have that just about done but there are a couple loose ends there.  Next week we are going to try to wrap all that up and start locking in bands.  It’s a long process, doing that much booking for one event takes a long time.  We’re trying to get out ahead of it this year, if you get behind the curve then you’re scrambling at the end, and I don’t like that.  And some of the major acts we’re trying to book are already booking, like Wooten, they are already routing his tour for next March, so we have to get on top of that stuff early.  I mean you can’t wait until June or July, I mean, that’s already happening.  So we should know if he’s coming by the end of this month.

MW: We recently went to see a Sunday show at the Pike, Dave Mell Blues Band.  For a college student, those non-ticketed events represent a pretty solid opportunity for us to see a show at a lower cost.  How important is it to have those non-ticketed events?

Dave Mell Blues Band performs at the Pike Cafe in Reading, PA

JE: Very important. We started that years ago to get as many clubs, restaurants, churches involved, because it makes the festival unique.  There are all these community events where people can enjoy the festival.  If they don’t really want to go see a major artist, they can go and enjoy the festival by going to The Pike, or a church event or a club event.  And that’s real important.  Again, that reaches the community, the festival touches the community and gives people an opportunity to be involved with the festival, it’s something they are comfortable doing.

MW: I think that’s a special thing because just about everywhere in Reading has something to do with the festival, and everybody’s on board, and it’s a real positive thing.  I think music is a really positive thing that brings people together.

JE: Events like that, community events, are the reason why people have the feeling.  If they live in that neighborhood and they want to go down to the Pike to see something, they make their reservation, they enjoy the festival, they understand what the festival is all about, and they don’t go see McCoy Tyner or something like that, that’s fine.  To me, it’s really important to have the whole community involved.

MW: Shifting to the out-of-Reading tourism coming in, what’s that effect like?  How much of an influence comes from outside?

JE: A lot.  Probably 60-70% of the people come from out of town for the major shows.  We have people from 36 states buy tickets.  We have people come from overseas; I just got an email from a guy who was here for ten days, from Holland, Netherlands, comes every year.  There are people who come from England every year; it’s just unique where people come from.  It surprises me that there is so much music in the world and they choose to come here, and the reason people like coming here, and if you go on our website I put comments from fans on the webpage, people like the atmosphere that we create here.  People can come out and hang with the artists, the artists hang with the fans, and it’s very fan-friendly.  We try to give opportunities for fans to do something that doesn’t happen at other concerts where you go to see a concert, you pay your money, you sit down, and you leave.  Here, you come and you hang for the weekend, you may have breakfast with Rick Braun or Brian Bromberg, and the artists are very, particularly on the contemporary side, fan-friendly, they make a point to go out and sign autographs all the time, and pose for pictures, and people love that.

MW: And it’s a big community of people who like the same thing.

JE: Absolutely, yeah.

MW: I guess it’s kind of a getaway from wherever everybody’s coming from.

JE: Yeah.  You know you’ll get an autograph, a picture taken with an artist.  We really push that element.  All our volunteers are trained to be friendly.  We have a simple plan.  Take care of the artists, take care of the fans, and everything will take care of itself.

MW: Sounds good.  So this Jazz Fest featured a special concert at the Reading Crowne Hotel, the Music of Stevie Wonder, where Gerald Veasley’s band celebrated Stevie Wonder’s music.  Are there plans to do future events that collaborate with artist’s music like that?

JE: Absolutely, yeah we started doing those about five years ago, and two things have happened.  One, we have tremendous relationships with a lot of the artists who come to us with ideas.  And two, we want to do those things because it makes the festival special.  That concert will not be seen any place else.  That’s a one-time deal they did there.  We have developed them through the years and people really like that because you go to Berks Jazz Fest and you’re going to see something unusual and unique.  Last year we did a tribute to Grover Washington, we had an all-star cast with Patty Labelle, a couple years ago we did the music of Luther Vandross, and we had Cissy Houston, the original music director for Luther Vandross there, and people come out for that.

MW: That kind of draws in a larger audience too.

JE: Exactly, it brings in that pop audience a little bit.

MW: Berks County is pretty lucky to have a number of organizations that collaborate and work together.  Berks Arts Council presents the jazz fest; I know Reading Musical Foundation is involved.  Can you talk about the role that they play in supporting the festival?

JE: This festival is very unique in that it’s truly a community event.  It’s a collaboration of the business community, the arts community, and the hotel community.  If all those things weren’t in place, it couldn’t happen, because the hotels provide accommodations for the artists, the business community provides the sponsorship and the funding, and the arts community has their role.  A lot of people say to us all the time, how come this works in Reading?  There’s no festival in Philly anymore, the New York festival is in trouble.  It’s because everybody is on the same page.  Everybody strives to make this work, and as long as we have that collaborative balance, it’ll be fine.

MW: I guess that’s a thing also about music.  I think you can’t separate the music and the business, you kind of have to embrace it, and I think that this is a perfect example of that.  Because the music is definitely awesome, but you can see that there is a business element with the hotels and food and music, but that’s kind of part of it, you contribute to what’s putting it on.  You’ll never get away from that.

JE: And we strive to keep our ticket prices affordable, I mean, our highest ticket price was $49, every show at the Reading Crowne Plaza was $39, we have shows for $15.  We do that because we want people to come and go to multiple concerts.  If you have a major act and you know you could get $55, in today’s market that’s nothing, but we don’t do that.  We want to make sure that people have the money to come and go see two, three, four, five shows.  And that’s important too.  Control the ticket price.  Sure, we could make more money if we jacked everything up five bucks, but then people start making choices.  I can’t afford to go to four..

MW: Maybe stay one less day.

JE: Exactly.  So we really strive to do that.  It puts pressure on the festival financially, but that’s how we approach it.

MW: It’s good to have decision makers that know the way things should be.

JE: Well, we sit down, we plan all year long, we talk all year long, and we listen to the people.  We get emails; I got fifty emails yesterday from fans.  And I reply to them all.  I take the time to actually reply to them all, because you’ve got to keep that communication open, make them feel special, and they are special.  Without the fans, you’ve got nothing.

MW: And probably the ones that are emailing are the ones that care, bringing their husbands and wives, and someone else.  And maybe they will tell someone else they had a really good experience.

JE: Exactly.  And people tell us they didn’t like this, or they didn’t like that, and you know, can you improve on this.  We put all those together and we review them and see how we can do things better.  We never take people for granted.

MW: For the festival there were a number of previews in the Reading Eagle as well as local advertisements.  What other methods are used to get the word out about Jazz Fest?

JE: Internet.  Our website is our number one marketing tool.  We have a database with many emails on it.  We do e-newsletters, e-blasts, all the time.  Partnerships with radio stations with different styles of music, whether it’s XPN, WRTI, WDIY in Allentown, we have multiple partners.  In Allentown with their TV station WFMZ.  We work together.  They do some advertising, we pay for some stuff, and they do promotions.  We try to create win-win partnerships with everybody.

MW: XPN actually presented one of the shows.

JE: They presented Béla Fleck and Derek Trucks.

MW: Win-win with all those collaborations, building relationships for the future.  In your Jazz Beat Blog, you thank a number of people from the “Berks Jazz Fest Family”.  What’s it like having someone working together in that type of environment for something so positive?

JE: Well it’s great.  I mean we have the most dedicated volunteers of anything I’ve ever been involved in.  We have people that take vacations and work seven days.  Ten days.  It’s amazing.  Over the years we’ve developed some wonderful relationships and friendships with these people, and it astonishes me what people in the community do to volunteer for this.  There are over three hundred volunteers, whether they’re taking tickets or working stage crew, you can’t say thank you enough to them.  It’s an army of people, and they come to meetings, particularly the production people.  We have three big meetings leading up to the festival, stage managers have their own crews and they run that part, Gary Spencer oversees the whole thing.  It’s very efficient.  Transportation team, they probably made sixty to seventy ground trip runs to the Philly airport.  That’s all on a computer, knowing what time this guy flies in, what time he’s departed, what time they have to be picked up from the hotel.  And we have a team of people who are dedicated to doing that.  It’s very satisfying to know that people are so committed.

MW: I also wanted to point out that you also mention in your blog that Gary Spencer is like your right hand partner because he manages and helps coordinate the production aspects.  For having so many professional musicians, the sound, lighting, staging, all that stuff…

GE: Yes.  And the arts council doesn’t own anything.  It doesn’t own a microphone.  So everything that we used to put on this festival has to be procured through vendors.  We start with a clean slate and turn a ballroom into a theatre.

MW: How important is it, having those production crews that know what they are doing?

GE: Priceless.  And it’s really kind of cool to see guys evolve over the years who started out working crews, and now they run crews.  And you know a stage manager has to have the ability to communicate with the artists, the road managers, and make tough decisions at times.  You have to be very forceful at times, and we have those people to do that.  They get up there and they take charge and run the deal.

MW: Definitely need someone back there.

GE: Yeah, because Gary can’t be everywhere, and we have this group of people who run their house, and they run it like it’s their business.

MW: Well, with so many shows on a given night, there could be three, four, five, not to mention the non-ticketed ones..

GE: And we really strive to make them start on time so people can get to the next show.  We do a show at seven; we have to clean the house, clean the room, and open the doors again.

MW: Are there any elements of the show you’d like to see developed more in the future?

GE: We’re always trying to do more education; we do a lot, but we’re always looking for opportunities to work with young musicians at the various music programs in the county.  We are constantly trying to do that, so we’re never satisfied and we always want to develop that more.  We have a really good group now of educators putting stuff together and we did a couple of really neat things this year.  I guess the goal isn’t to develop it more, but to make it well-rounded and the lineup diverse and attractive.  It’s not necessarily making it bigger or better, you just want to maintain a level of quality.

MW: Year after year.

GE: Yeah, and you work at it and at the end of the day you want to say that’s what we wanted to do.  Every year we do this, I look at it for twelve months and by the time the lineup comes I say, is this any good?  But that’s what we really work on.  Trust me, you could do this really easy and just pick, pick, pick, and fill it up, but does it make sense?  You want to have the right things in the right places, so if you want to see McCoy Tyner and you’re not a smooth jazz fan, you can do that, then the smooth jazz fans can go to another place.  You don’t want to have McCoy Tiner and Sonny Rollins next to each other.

MW: It’s kind of an art.

GE: Well, yeah.  I have a spreadsheet we work on, and everything’s color-coded to styles of music so that you don’t screw up.  And there are challenges now with the economy, the state of the record industry and radio.  You know jazz doesn’t get a lot of airplay anymore.  Those were always good promotional partners for us, so now you don’t have record label support.  Record labels are going away, and you don’t have that radio support like you used to, so you have to develop new ways, and that’s where the internet plays a role.  Capture that information, know where that person is, and then you just talk to them all the time.

MW: I did want to touch on that.  It seems like the festival went pretty well, but were there any issues with the economics of the event?

GE: The economy.  Like everything else, we were impacted from a sponsorship standpoint a little bit.  Ticket-wise we were not, the ticket sales represented the second-best festival ever.  Last year was our record, and we fell about four percent short of that.  In this economy…

MW: That’s pretty good.

GE: Pretty good.  It was unknown going into this year.  When you work really hard; we worked harder on this festival than any other festival to get the word out and talk to people.  And people responded, which was very gratifying that people came out.  They may have cut other things out of their life, I don’t know, but they still wanted to come to the festival.

MW: I guess it’s just as important, if not more important to support the arts in this type of climate.

GE: Yeah.  And if you just want to get away for a little bit and go listen to some music.  The festival was very successful, but I don’t want anyone to think we weren’t immune to it.  At the end of the day, sure maybe we would have done more, but we hit numbers that we were very satisfied with.

MW: I think you can take that as a win.

GE: Exactly, and in the sponsorship things, we had to work harder to make sure we recovered from that shortfall.

MW: I wanted to ask what we can expect from next year’s festival.

GE: Right now we’re just focused on next year.  We want to make the 20^th the best possible festival we can put together.  That’s why we’re starting early; we have that little theme going of trying to bring everybody back from the first festival.  Then we’re just going to try to fill it in with the best possible… we want to make it special and memorable.  It’s a milestone, a lot of people didn’t think we’d ever get to the 20^th, but we have, and then we’ll go from there for the 21^st.

Check out John Ernesto’s Jazz Beat Blog @ www.berksjazzfest.com/blog.